natives

We recently acquired this kinetic German nativity, similar to the one that my Grandmother (Nana) owned, which uses the hot air from the ring of candles to move the fins on the top of the spire, turning the central column and the levels of characters.  It's quite charming, and pretty captivating for the children.  (And another way we extend the excitement of the season -- by bringing out the decorations over the course of a week!)

lights up a room

One of our favorite photos of Linus is of a little ginger toddler crawling toward a string of Christmas lights.  We tried to  replicate the effect with this shot of Greta, which is as different in style as the two of them are in personality.  I'm going to have to get some pointers from Jeff about low-light photography -- but I'm most interested in the gesture, anyway.

formal sitting

Well, all right -- this is what we're going to go with as our official Christmas photo.  I don't know whether it's their ages or personalities (or simply the odds, given that there are four mobile children to wrangle now), but we can't manage to get all four responsive at the same time.  They're all looking in generally the same direction; that'll do.  At some point, maybe I'll post some of the outtakes, which is where the hilarity really lives.

curls

beaster

As we've continued to work on Gwennie's Battle Cards game, we've added a number of characters named for family and friends.  And now we've finally gotten around to adding the beasts we live with.  Here is a characteristic photo of "Spatsfoot" and the less effective photo of "Plumetail" we used on their cards.  I'm going to wait to present Pudge until we can get a picture of him when he gets startled and his stubby little tail bottlebrushes; it's the funniest thing, but we still don't have a decent shot of it.

fall tramp

cleanliness is next to the mirror

foliage

We don't get much in the way of autumn here -- a few chilly days, and a few  trees that improbably take up warm colors.  All the more reason to celebrate it, even if you have to do so in shirtsleeves.

finis

It took a bit longer than the afternoon of block print day, but Gwennie finished her Christmas card design, and is very happy with how it turned out.  (Next time, we may do more experiments with printing multiple colors from a single block, as we did with one of the kids' friends who cut a Rudolph card -- lots of possibilities there.)

ugh

I should also mention that part of the reason for our severe lag in posting is due to a run of sickness which we experienced at  the end of November: Linus contracted pneumonia (in Texas!), Casper had a hacking cough for several weeks, and Greta caught the croup.  The rest of us got the flu and passed it around for a while.  If I didn't have the benefit of perspective, I would say that it was the worst family pandemic we've ever had.

That, my friends, is known in the biz as "foreshadowing."

Image of memento mori woodblock by Barbara Whitehead courtesy of Cushing Memorial Library.

perspective

Just to provide another vantage on yesterday's photos, here's a shot of everyone in the tree just after I got those shots.

Texas monkeys

formal shot

All I wanted was to get a nice portrait of the kids before Christmas.  All they wanted was a picture where they looked like speedy ghosts.

block print day

Today we invited a group of twelve 8-12 year old children to our home for a linocut Christmas card class.  We had told friends that we were working on festive cards, and after hearing the interest, we decided to make an afternoon of it.  If an assortment of great designs and a minimum of injuries can determine success, this certainly qualifies.  For anyone who may have missed the fun, we also used the process to produce an online tutorial.

the architect

Thanksgiving dinner

Gwendolyn produced this delicious-looking feast on Thanksgiving morning.  The best part of the holiday, of course, is that even enemies can come together to enjoy a pleasant meal -- Hermione sitting next to Snape, Harry and Draco.  Cowboys and construction workers.  I even think Voldemort is sitting somewhere around that table somewhere.  Tuck in.

group portrait

couple of tramps

'ib

Gwennie called her crib "pib," and whimpered lamentably when we moved her into a little girl bed.  Casper  called his "frib."  I'm not sure how Greta will refer to her Night Cage, but she's already pretty attached.

fortified

The children started constructing this fort at Bee Creek Park after meeting a number of friends for a play date and discovering a suitable bank of trees with a nice gap underneath.  They have been collecting limbs to create a privacy wall -- we'll have to see what other amenities they come up with.

park-our

transform

mustaches

This is the advantage of long hair: it makes it easier to get into costume as an eighteenth-century Austrian officer.

where feet can take you

As we'd predicted, once Margaret started walking in earnest, she didn't stop.  While she had taken a handful of steps over the previous weeks, she didn't seem to consider it any real accomplishment.  She would look dismissively at her siblings' excitement, then crawl off to continue her explorations.  Yesterday, not only did she beat her personal record by walking over twenty steps, but she seemed to realize the potential of this new trick.  In fact, it's kept us all up at night, since she now wants to get more practice in whenever she can.  

We've got love locked up.

It may be common knowledge to the few who visit this site, but the reason that we've gotten so late in providing updates on our family blog (four months and counting -- but who's counting?) is that we've devoted most of our time during this period to creating and building our letterpress business, Anise Press.  I'm trying to catch up (in between designing and printing new cards, posters, and other fun additions) by adding all the pictures we've taken in the interim.  We hope that no one's felt abandoned!

the book arts

Of course, Linus was the actual hand model of the dos-a-dos binding tutorial.  He also helped to select the offprints from the pressroom to use as decorative covers for his own pamphlet, then filled the book with pictures of robots.  It's hard to top that.  

comforts of home

do-si-do

We spent quite a bit of time last month setting up a tutorial on a simple bookbinding structure, the dos-a-dos, for the Anise Press blog.  The boys were highly interested in helping with the guide, but may have really been interested in being poster children.  Well, that might not be entirely fair -- Casper might have  only wanted to get a fancy book to draw in.

gaming

This shot commemorates Linus throwing matching numbers with his two dice six times in a row while we were having a family game day.  It's quite a parlor trick.

cozy clan

Gwendolyn was recently playing a game of Warriors Battle when she was joined by the ever-ferocious Spatsfoot.  Watch out for those two.

stressless

There's nothing like the placid expression of a sleeping infant -- I don't think that there's any point in my life, conscious or not, at which I can appear so peaceful.